Ecological modellers may be deterred from using object-oriented programming languages by reports of the inherent rigidity of the object-oriented formulation, giving rise to a poor representation of biotic interaction. Internal approaches of imitating relationships between the components of an ecological model bury the associated code inside the object declarations of one or more of these compon...

The health effects of gender are mediated via group-level constraints of sex roles and norms, discrimination and marginalisation of individuals, and internalisation of the stresses of role discordance. Although gender is frequently a lens through which data are interpreted there are few composite measures that insert gender as an independent variable into research design. Instead, sex disaggreg...

Ecological character displacement is a prominent hypothesis for the maintenance of ecological differences between species that are critical to stable coexistence. Models often ascribe interspecific competitive interactions single character, but multiple characters contribute competition, and their effects on selection can be nonadditive. Focusing one we ask if other affect competition alter evo...

AIM The origins of ecological diversity in continental species assemblages have long intrigued biogeographers. We apply phylogenetic comparative analyses to disentangle the evolutionary patterns of ecological niches in an assemblage of European birds. We compare phylogenetic patterns in trophic, habitat and climatic niche components. LOCATION Europe. METHODS From polygon range maps and hand...

Many physical diseases have been reported to be associated with psychosocial factors. In these diseases, assessment relies mainly on subjective symptoms in natural settings. Therefore, it is important to assess symptoms and/or relationships between psychosocial factors and symptoms in natural settings. Symptoms are usually assessed by self-report when patients visit their doctors. However, self...

Ecological momentary assessment and/or experience sampling methods are increasingly used in health studies to study subjective experiences within changing environmental contexts. In these studies, up to 30 or 40 observations are often obtained for each subject. Because there are so many measurements per subject, one can characterize a subject's mean and variance and can specify models for both....